Jeffrey D. Sadow is an associate professor of political science at Louisiana State University Shreveport. If you're an elected official, political operative or anyone else upset at his views, don't go bothering LSUS or LSU System officials about that because these are his own views solely.
This publishes Sunday through Thursday with the exception of 7 holidays. Also check out his Louisiana Legislature Log especially during legislative sessions (in "Louisiana Politics Blog Roll" below).

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11.8.14

GOP chickens may roost by its blanket primary support

Qualifying for federal elections
in Louisiana begins next week, and Republicans have to hope that a decision too
many party elected officials and leaders realized too late does not come back
to haunt them.

Four years ago the state reversed
course on its decision to have closed primary elections for these offices,
where only voters who are affiliated with a party (or under that version
no-party voters if allowed by the party) could vote to nominate a candidate for
the general election. This system promoted
greater accountability and provided incentives for issue preferences of
candidates rather than their personalities to be evaluated by voters. After the
2008 and 2010 elections, the blanket primary system, which actually does not
include a primary but heads straight to a general election, was reinstituted.

Besides strengthening parties
because of their increased value as aggregative mechanisms that could bestow
the most important asset to a candidate, a nomination, closed primaries also
helped parties in their ability to forward stronger general election candidates
by disallowing interference by non-party elements in that process. Lack of that
ability may prove decisive in at least two 2014 contests.

The GOP found a heavyweight, Rep.
Bill Cassidy, to take on incumbent
Democrat Sen. Mary Landrieu, but
crashing the party is military retiree/corporate functionary Ron Maness, who never before has run for
any office. All indications are Maness will pull enough support from Cassidy to
throw
the election into a runoff (given extant polling information, it is as
unlikely for Landrieu to win without a runoff as it is for Maness to make the
runoff). Also at this time there is every reason to believe, given there is
little policy difference between the two, that (with Maness’ blessing as of now
should it turn out this way) most of those who vote for Maness in the general
election would vote for Cassidy in the runoff. A few may not, who consider the
almost seven years that Cassidy would have spent total in elected office as the
mark of Cain, and would sit out any election without a Maness-like competitor.

Yet a bird in the hand is worth
more than two in the bush. Anything could happen between Nov. 4 and Dec. 6, so
the earlier Maness could be closed out, the better from the perspective of Republicans
who want the strongest conservative candidate that could defeat Landrieu
benefitting from a favorable electoral environment that could erode the longer
the campaigning lasts. A party primary prior to the general election would
provide more opportunity for any ill-feelings of a losing candidate to subside
and prevent the simultaneous stoking of these by another party’s candidate
prior to a general election. However, it could be argued that the
more-favorable dynamics of a Dec. 6 election for a Republican could negate the
ill-effects of divisiveness.

For this Senate contest,
therefore conducting it through a closed rather than blanket primary system
probably will not make a difference in party fortunes. But it’s an entirely
different matter in regards to the Fifth Congressional District contest, where embattled
and disgraced Republican Rep. Vance
McAllister is trying to hang on against several conservative Republican
challengers and liberal Democrat Monroe Mayor Jamie Mayo.

Most Republican activists are
suspicious of McAllister, who breaks with the party’s conservative base on
certain issues, and also they fear that, because of a scandal of marital
infidelity compounded by going back for reasons of questionable sincerity on a
declaration he would not run for reelection, if he were to face a quality
Democrat in a runoff situation that he could lose. Thus, they do not want to
see him in the race.

And if there were a closed
primary, they wouldn’t have to deal with him past the primary. Polling
data show that his GOP challengers pull 47 percent of the entire electorate
while he gets just 27 percent at present. Given that he is likelier than any of
them to have Democrat votes in his total, he certainly could not win a party
primary without a runoff (the junked system provided for a runoff if the
primary did not produce a candidate with an absolute majority) and it’s just as
unlikely he would win the runoff if he even made it that far.

But unless one of the Republican
challengers separates himself from the field, there’s a decent chance
McAllister could survive into a runoff against Mayo, who is likely to make it
as the only Democrat running and very likely to receive a vast majority of the
black vote in the district. If so, being that in the poll only 35 percent of
respondents said they would definitely vote for McAllister in a runoff, as
opposed to 36 percent who said they definitely would not, with the other 29
percent saying their votes depended upon his opponent, there’s a decent chance
he could lose to Mayo.

As a result, the blanket primary
will have caused at least putting an unreliable conservative into a seat that
is tailor-made for a solid conservative, but, worse for them, perhaps enable a
liberal Democrat to win in a district such a politician has no business
winning. The reversal in election procedures happened because some
self-interested legislators saw that to their advantage, while others remained
inattentive or unaware of the potential consequences. What Pres. Barack Obama’s
favorite
preacher said about America may apply to Louisiana’s Republicans: because
of that choice, their chickens may come home to roost in needlessly giving away
a victory.

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